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For more than five years, John Adams has photographed events at the DNA Lounge, chronicling many national and local acts such as Green Day, New Model Army, The Birthday Massacre, and Halou.

Over 150 full color photos from 70 events fill this book, which contains a behind the scenes look at the flier creation process of R. Black, a special backstage section, and coverage of the Hubba Hubba review burlesque show.

Proceeds from this book's sales go towards the DNA Lounge Legal Defense Fund. The California Alcoholic Beverage Control is trying to shut down the DNA Lounge for what they call "lewd behavior" at Gay and Lesbian nights.

The Justin.TV guys gave me some tips on how to improve the video quality of the webcast, so it should be looking and sounding a lot better now... Let me know! There's no audio at the moment, since we're not open until Friday night, but the picture looks a lot better to me. You should now be receiving H.264 at 480x360, 15 FPS, at somewhere in the neighborhood of 500kbps. I suppose it's possible that that's too high bandwidth for some people? I no longer know what's common here in This Modern World.

Rather than using the video encoder built in to the Flash plugin, I'm using Flash Media Live Encoder 4, which has a lot better options, and (bonus!) can be run from the command line, making it easy to automate.

So, Folsom Street Fair is on Sunday, and DNA Lounge will be closed that day. Why, you ask? Well, because the well-known ABC shenanigans mean that we will no doubt be under more intense scrutiny than any of the other thirteen blocks and four hundred thousand people of the fair, and would be placed in the odd position of having conversations like this all day long:

"I'm sorry, Sir. You are perfectly welcome to stand in the middle of the street in front of the club, with a cup of beer in your hand and your cock hanging out, but before you come into our nightclub, you'll have to pour out your beer and put some pants on."

So, fuck it, we're just going to be closed. It's not worth having an argument with every single customer, and yet still risking getting another bullshit "lewdness" citation despite our best efforts. We had a number of promoters wanting to do lucrative events here that day, but thanks to the meddling of those homophobic prohibitionists from Sacramento whom we like to call the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, we'll be leaving money on the table in a way that no other business located within range of the Folsom Street Fair would even consider.

Now that the kiosks are gone, I took a pass through my office and hauled out all the computers that are no longer needed in their absence. There were a lot! I think there must be at least 15 more-or-less complete PCs in the pile, plus at least that many extra power supplies of unknown vintage. Dozens of crystal trackballs, maybe half of which are fully functional. Probably two dozen PS2 keyboards, half of them brand new and in the box. Piles and piles and piles of cables. Video cards. Hubs. All of it dusty.

A lot of this stuff is in working order, but it's almost all more than three years old, which makes it completely obsolete. Some of it might be worth money, but it's certainly not worth my time to sit down and plug it all in and figure out what still works and what doesn't, so I guess we're just going to try and get some computer recycling place to come and haul it all away.

An Administrative Law Judge has recommended dismissal of the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) disciplinary action against the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco for changing its operation without obtaining approval from the ABC.

The Administrative Law Judge held that while Great American Music Hall had in fact changed its operation, the regulation relied upon by the ABC was ambiguous. While ABC does not agree with the Administrative Law Judge's ruling, and has not accepted the proposed decision, it has decided to dismiss the action against the Great American Music Hall. This decision does not necessarily affect any other pending cases.

To address the issues raised by the Administrative Law Judge, ABC will engage in the rulemaking process through the State Office of Administrative Law in order to clarify the regulation.

What this says is, "We intend to go make up a new rule, then turn right around and come after GAMH again. And we're still going to continue attacking the other clubs, because maybe whatever judge we get on those cases will let us get away with it anyway."

So please, don't let anyone tell you that the fight is over, or that GAMH (or any of us) are out of the woods. GAMH fought ABC to a standstill in this skirmish, but the War on Fun continues apace.

In case you've forgotten, ABC's accusation against GAMH is that they don't serve enough food. An important detail here is that, unlike some other venues, GAMH's liquor license does not include any particular food sales requirement. ABC would like to hold every under-21 nightclub to the standard that you have to make 50% of your revenue from food sales.